


the hills' trembling throats sing hallelujah

by Ronabird



Series: from the belly of the deepest love [1]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Touching, Gen, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Oz's life story now with soul animals, Sort Of, because i know myself and my tropes, for worldbuilding purposes, i am bingewriting this in like two days, this is very self indulgent, wildly unbeta'd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26377939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ronabird/pseuds/Ronabird
Summary: He does not know his own name, but his daemon is called Tippetarius.
Relationships: Ozma/Salem (RWBY)
Series: from the belly of the deepest love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922233
Comments: 7
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My tradition: when I get into a new fandom, I settle in by writing daemon fic. Oz's Whole Situation is too interesting not to dig into, so here we are.
> 
> The song I looped while writing this:
> 
> _From the belly of the deepest love,  
>  The hills' trembling throats sing hallelujah  
> Like the flowers on a dogwood tree  
> Blush with blame you took for me  
> Oh how you wish to be with me  
> Oh how you wish to be with me_

Everyone was whole, in the world that came before. Ozma wielded his magic in flashes of dazzling emerald, and his whole being seemed to shine with it. Salem was beautiful and vibrant, rich with soul. It was a world steeped in magic and in the Brothers' love.

When Ozma died weak and gasping, wracked with the fever-tremors, he died whole. And when he passed into that other place, that after-place, he knew only the peace of that eternal twilight. There was no loss, no separation, only the comfort of the Brothers' other realm.

He was not able to rest long.

He was wrenched from that drifting place back into a world of hard edges, purple spires, panic and pain. Salem held him and the Brothers fought above him and the chaos of it, the hard terrible _intensity_ of it, made him want to sob and crawl back into the twilight.

He didn't have to, of course. He didn't live for long. Only a few unwanted moments, dizzying and brutal.

The next place he properly registered was _flat._ Flat-white sky, flat-white ground, none of the easy eddies of peace that he knew from the twilight realm but neither the brittle intensity of the living world. Out from the white stepped the Elder Brother, shining molten gold as the sunrise, and the god tipped his antlered head to Ozma.

He offered a task. A return to the now-broken world. Immortality.

Ozma tried to decline.

But if his love still lived, how could he deny the chance to see her again?

*

He comes to awareness in a forest, to the sound of screaming and the smell of smoke. There are people running— animals fleeing with them— the Brother's Grimm are here, black and tarry and reaching with vicious claws.

The world is crushingly heavy and crushingly _real_ , but it is not so jarring as being torn from that twilight place, and this time he knew to expect it. He grips the pitchfork in his hands and pivots to drive it through the heart of a Beowolf. He tastes smoke and soil, feels the burn of strain in his arms, and knows that he is _alive_ again.

The monster bursts into ash as it dies, and the little black flakes of it drift out of existence. This leaves him to realize—

His hands are different.

(They're not. They're his hands. They've always looked like this.)

But they are _different_ (aren't they?) _._ He doesn't have a swordsman's calluses (why would he?); his fingers are long and slim and a more olive shade of brown (of course they are). He...

He doesn't understand what he's feeling. This roiling confusion, this horror, it feels as though it comes to him from across a disorienting gap— it is somehow external, as though his heart has been taken from his body and displaced a few feet to the left—

He turns and finds himself looking into the eyes of a deer.

(His deer. His soul. But not his soul— why would his soul be a deer—?)

"Who are you?" breathes the deer. He recoils in shock even as he opens his mouth to answer it, and...

And he realizes he does not know the answer. He does not know who he _is._

"Who are you?" demands the deer, more intent and frightened now, and it steps toward him. It is a beautiful creature, the same shade of dusty brown as his skin, with a pretty flare of white before its soft black nose. Its antlers are a familiar shape. The shape of its antlers makes him want to beg to go back into the twilight.

He realizes he can _feel_ its panic, and holds up his familiar-unfamiliar hands to pacify the creature.

"I— I think— I'm Ozma."

His voice comes rough and unfamiliar, and this is apparently not the answer the deer had wanted. It rears back a step, rakes the ground with one hoof, its ears pinning in distress. "No. You're not. You're _mine_. Do you even know my name?"

He does, somehow.

"Tippetarius?"

That appeases it. _Him._ Tip is a _him_ , and Tip is _his._ And Tip steps carefully forward, the tines of his antlers lowered as though he may yet decide to gore Ozma— Ozma?— for moving wrong. Very carefully, through the dark grass with the smell of smoke still in the air, Tip steps close enough to lean the smooth curve of one antler against Ozma's bare arm.

The live-wire feeling of contact is at once _right_ and viscerally, invasively _wrong_. He and the deer break apart, shuddering.

" _What_ ," moans Tip, softly, in despair. "What _is_ this. Who _are_ we? Who am _I?_ "

And Ozma, who has never stood eye to eye with his own soul before, breathes,

"I don't know."

Then another scream rings through the forest, with the snarling of another Beowolf. Ozma takes up his pitchfork again, and Tip straightens at his side.

They will figure it out as they go.

*

He finds the world broken, and he finds the people in pieces.

It takes a good deal of adjusting. Every single human seems to have an animal walking beside them, a shard of their soul kept external. They cannot cast full magic, but they can wield power in odd little fits and starts, as though each soul is _almost_ complete enough to form what they should be. _A shadow of what they once were_ , the Elder Brother had said. He sees it.

Even stranger are the people he finds in cages. No animals walk beside them; instead, they have horns and claws and tails of their own. He wonders if that makes them more complete than the humans split in two. He supposes they are just differently broken.

He walks the land and tries to learn. He becomes more himself— Ozma— and less the man Tippetarius remembers. And Tippetarius becomes less what he had been, and more of... something else. Something _new_.

His antlers are still that shape that makes Ozma shiver to see, elegantly pronged and divine. In the evenings he can make out a golden glow to them, as though they're composed of distilled sunlight, brighter with every passing night. Tip's eyes had always been a natural, serene dark brown, he knows; but now silver is bleeding through them. By the time the weather turns cold, they are becoming bright as mirrors, reflecting the glow from that crown of gold.

A soul with glowing antlers draws attention, it seems. And he learns of another stranger in the land: a woman who is not Faunus, yet has no daemon at all.

With Tippetarius at his side, he goes to find Salem.

And, oh, he finds her. She is changed. Her vibrant beauty has gone _strange_ , pale as the shattered moon, her eyes the same tarry black as the Brother's Grimm. The light that shines out from them is blood-red and uncanny enough to make him prickle all over with unease, but still, she is Salem. She is his love. She _lives_.

There is no animal beside her. When she draws free of their embrace and sees Tippetarius at his side, she turns a perplexed little smile on him. It makes something sweet and raw flutter in Ozma's chest.

"My," she says, "Ozma, you've picked up a _pet._ "

"His name is Tippetarius," Ozma tells her, and he rests a hand on on his soul's elegant neck. The sensation is no longer so discordant. It feels mostly _right_ , now, to be in contact with the deer. Still it makes him shiver as though touching an exposed nerve, but— but it isn't _bad_.

When Salem scoffs and reaches out, though, his heart seems to leap into his throat and drop past his feet all at once. Her slender fingers settle against the velvet of Tip's nose, and it is as though she's stroking his exposed heart: he reels with shock, with horror, with love.

Tip shudders almost violently under her touch, and Salem's gaze goes _hungry_ , goes predatory in a way that sends Ozma's whole body fluttering again. She cards her fingertips up through the short fur of his snout, and Ozma-and-Tip make some horribly embarrassing sound in unison. Their low little moan might be horror or might be longing, he isn't sure, can't possibly untangle it. Everything in him screams violation and begs for more.

Salem is utterly without mercy: she looks only more fascinated, and slides her fingers higher to trace along the bases of his antlers—

He sees the moment she recognizes the shape of those antlers, because at once her expression shutters closed, and she draws her hand away. Ozma-and-Tip exhale in shaky, dazed... relief? Loss? He feels spared and bereft. He wants to run. He wants her to never stop touching him again.

" _Salem,_ " he says, and it comes out as dizzy as he feels. Her eyes flick to his again, and the warmth comes back into them. Her eyes are _fascinating_ , like the last coals of a late-night fire. They _smolder._

"Ozma," she says, and it's more of a purr.

She leads him inside.

He goes willingly.

She does not stop touching him for a very long time.

*

Their daughter is born whole.

" _Look_ at her," breathes Salem, as she holds the child in her arms. She does not look _loving_ so much as _fascinated_ , her dark eyes intent, but Ozma has grown accustomed to that. He stands with Tippetarius at his side, the stag's antlers now blazing gold as though they are constructed from a million motes of glowing light. Salem rarely looks at him.

"She's perfect," hums Salem, pleased and proud. "Our children are _human._ "

He is breathless with love and awe, but something in him stirs uneasily. Seeing a child born without a daemon is... _normal_ , most of him insists, and yet it is _wrong,_ some corner of his mind is certain. He doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know if she's actually whole, or if— he thinks with a bolt of horror— she is more broken and fragmented a soul than the rest in this world.

Five years later, it is confirmed the moment she bursts into their sitting room with little orbs of light swirling about her cupped palms. She has magic. She has a _whole_ soul.

Things go downhill very quickly, after that.

"This world deserves _better_ ," Salem says to him, as he paces tight circles before the windows of their castle. In the courtyard, their statues stand: Salem is carved sleek and towering, Ozma straight and noble, with Tippetarius between them. The stag's antlers are carved such that flames lick up his familiar antlers, to indicate the gold fire of the gods. Set between them as he is, he looks like a shared soul. Or like a third god.

Salem has always hated that part of the statue.

"Anything we might do about it would be drastic," says Tippetarius, standing calmly by the door. Salem, as always, narrows her eyes and ignores him. She directs her conversation to Ozma alone.

"Our bloodline is the only _true_ one on this world," she says, and her tone is so very reasonable. "Ozma, you must realize what a cruelty it is to let these creatures continue to overrun the land."

"The cruelty," he says, uneasy, still pacing, "would be in _killing_ them, Salem."

"They aren't even human!"

Tippetarius stamps a hoof on the stone floor, and the sharp _crack_ of sound echoes. Salem bares her teeth in a snarl and _still_ does not look at him.

"Ozma," she says. "We can fix this world. We can breathe new life into it. We can bring humanity _back._ "

"Humanity is _here!_ " cries Tip, and he tosses his bright antlers. "We are fine as we are!"

That is what makes her turn: the _we._ The look in her eyes is so venomous, so _hateful_ , that Tip and Ozma both still under its weight.

Finally she turns back to her husband, her fellow ruler, her fellow god, her— her fellow _tyrant—_ and sinks back into that slow, predatory smile that always makes him thrill and shiver. This time, he thinks it might be more with fear than love.

"Think about it, love," she says.

He says that he will.

He thinks about it the whole time he huddles in a stone corridor with Tippetarius, crying into his sleeves, devising the plan to take their daughters and run.

*

The statues come to rubble in the battle. Salem cleaves those carved godly antlers from the stone Tippetarius and looks _viciously_ satisfied.

In the end, among the smoking ruins, she gets to snap one from his head. The wounded deer howls in her grip; Ozma, bloody on the ground, _screams_. Salem only looks on in fascination as the broken antler dissolves into motes of gold, evaporating out of her palm in sparks of sunlight.

Then she turns on Ozma.


	2. Chapter 2

When he opens his eyes again, his hands are different. His skin is pale and wrinkled. He's never been either, before.

Ozma— Ozma?— _Ozma_ does not permit the muddle of confusion in his mind. He does not have room for it in his heart. The little antelope that stares up at him has antlers like a deer's, like a dragon's. He knows they will come to glow gold. She is a _she_ , and has a name, but he does not care. She is Tippetarius.

He is already so _tired._

In this life, he learns all he already knew: none of their girls made it out of the rubble. Salem has left their armies to lose the crusades they'd set them on. The Grimm are being sighted _everywhere_.

He drinks until he dies.

*

It would be easier to say that Salem brought the castle down. That Salem is the reason.

But the crossfire came from both sides.

He spends the next life drinking, too. His hands are pale again, though not wrinkled. It doesn't matter. Tippetarius is some graceful savannah creature that certainly isn't meant to have horns like a dragon's. It doesn't _matter._

He knows now why Salem couldn't stand the sight of those antlers. He sends Tippetarius away while he— she? they?— _he_ is still unsure of his own name. It hurts. It does not hurt as much as it _should_ , though. There is an unnatural distance between them already built, a lingering ache of loss and death. It makes the parting easier.

His soul goes off into the forest, and returns only long enough for Ozma to snarl and throw bottles and send him away again.

People give him a wide berth, in this life. All the better.

*

Pale hands again. Young hands. He doesn't care.

He spends a good deal of this life thinking about death. Tippetarius does not _want_ to go away— does not even want to be called Tippetarius— but he doesn't _care_. The implications are setting in, and he cannot effectively drink them away:

His soul feels achingly distant all the time, now. There had never been such sense of _loss_ in death when the Brothers had walked the world, when they had guided souls into that gentle twilight. This feels nothing like that.

He wonders if his daughters made it into the twilight.

He wonders if they made it there whole.

He cries, and drinks, and smothers away the protesting voice in his head. He does not count the months between his fights with Tippetarius. There are rumors of Grimm concentrations increasing to the north. He hardly knows what continent he's on. At every mention of _Grimm concentrations_ he thinks of her, and of the snap of Tip's antler, and of the frightened screams of the girls—

Years pass.

There comes a night that a stag arrives at his door, antlers blazing gold.

" _Go,_ " begs Ozma, or whatever his name has become. He hasn't been keeping track. His hands are pale, that's all he knows and more than he cares about. "I don't want to see you."

"You need me," says the stag.

"I _hate_ you," says Ozma. "It hurts to have you here."

"I know."

"Don't you hate me?" he demands. "You have every right to. I've stolen your life. I've— I've ruined _everything._ "

"This will not fix it," says the stag that is only mostly Tippetarius, and his voice is so soft and sad that Ozma abandons any semblance of dignity and throws his arms around those elegant shoulders. He clutches his soul close and cries through the live-nerve intensity of it, the knowledge that he is not himself and his soul is not _his_ , and that nothing will ever be right again.

*

They face her again, not truly knowing if they want vengeance or reconciliation. But they know to have their guard up, now. Ozma knows how to fight her.

He forgets his newfound weak spot. She sears Tippetarius to nothing, and it is the last pain Ozma ever feels.

*

He gets his staff back, after. She leaves it for him in the ruins of their old home, beneath their shattered statues. He knows better than to take is as an olive branch: it's an _invitation_. She's awaiting the next round.

He's too tired.

He uses it as a walking stick, and cringes every time he touches the soul that is not entirely Tippetarius. They touch anyway. They talk about plans. They enact none of them.

He's too _tired._

The Elder Brother had told him he would never be alone, had implied he would never be _lonely_. He has, as of recently, developed many less-than-charitable thoughts about the Elder Brother.

It is an uneventful life, compared to the last. He feels no less tired at the end of it.

*

His hands are brown again, and broad, this time. Steady and callused. A workman's hands.

This time, Ozma tries to make himself as distant as Tippetarius. He tries to be _separate_ , to be _quiet_ , to be... far away. It largely works. Ozma is not Ossian, and Ossian's daemon— is that the word, this time?— is not Tippetarius. He is a handsome red stag, and his antlers are mostly a usual shape. They've hardly changed at all with his arrival.

This is for the best, because Ossian is in love.

Ozma— or, the person he had been last time; Oska?— had been in love, too. Ozma had not tolerated it. Ozma had walked them far away from that, because it was pain he could not bear. This time, though, he is nursing the wound a different way. He knows it is maudlin, but still he aches with longing at every thought of Ossian's beloved.

"I know you're there," says Ossian, one summer twilight. Ozma, or Ozma-and-Oska— or— _Ozma_ is simplest to say even if it's now drifted somewhat off the mark— whoever he is, he goes still and guilty within the man's mind.

 _Oh?_ he thinks, and feels their body tense with recognition. Ossian turns sharply to look for the speaker, but there is only grassland and the outskirts of their little village.

"I can hear you," says Ossian, slow and careful. He is still scanning their surroundings. "How are you doing this?"

 _I don't mean to be,_ thinks Ozma, softly. _How did you know?_

Ossian gives a soft little sound, his gaze stilling now on the horizon. "I felt it happen. Phaestos's antlers changed shape— the tips never curved like that. And when I think about Maria, there are these moments of... sorrow."

 _Ah_ , says Ozma. He is aware that their daemon is watching them, the stag holding still and tense beside the door of their little home. Ossian's little home. _My apologies. It seems you are very unlucky._

"Oh?"

_You were next in line to receive a curse. My name is Ozma._

They talk all through the sunset, until the sky is lit only by the shattered moon. Ozma tells him how it came to be that way. Ozma tells him everything.

Ossian takes it rather well, all considered.

"So you'll take my mind and my daemon," he says, stony, into the darkness. The night is still warm, and crickets sing out on the plains.

_Yes. I'm sorry._

"Fine," says Ossian, and Ozma can feel the yawning canyon of his fear, but he can also feel the steel of his resolve. "I have a condition. I want to be with Maria— as much as I can. That's all."

 _It will mean_ I _am also with Maria,_ says Ozma. _It all runs together, in the end, as I've said._

Ossian grits his teeth. "Then shut your eyes and plug your ears—"

_I can't._

"Then at least _keep quiet_ in our moments together. I am hers before anyone else's. She deserves as much of me as she can have."

 _I understand_ , says Ozma, and he does. He really does.

It hurts horribly, for a very long time, watching the man with his love. _Being_ the man with his love. It is not long before he cannot track whether he is Ozma or Ossian, whether there is a distinction between the two. He is constantly afraid he will cease to love Maria, and he does not know which _him_ feels the fear.

It is gradual, the way gold begins to light the stag's antlers. It is gradual, the way the daemon speaks more and more with a familiar tone. His name is not Tippetarius, but it might as well be.

They tell Maria the very basics, in the end. Not all of it. Not the truth of the moon, or Salem, or the Brothers. She is a part of Ossian's life before she is a part of Ozma's, and it is a last-ditch effort to keep the pieces of themselves separated. To keep _man_ and _immortal_ distinct roles.

But they cannot keep the light from Tip's antlers, or the silver from his eyes. The village talks. People notice; people are uneasy.

"I will not go away," says the stag who is as much Tippetarius as he is anyone. "I will not miss the birth of our child."

"You didn't," says Ozma-or-Ossian, flatly, not looking up from his tinkering. "Not any of the four of them."

"Your losses do not negate your present," says Tippetarius, and it makes Ozma-and-Ossian's hands still. "This is still happening, you know. It's still valuable. It's still _real_."

So it is.

They learn to share, in a fashion. The lines blur. And the village comes to know they have a skilled warrior in their midst, whose daemon is a stag with flaming antlers. This bears a terrible resemblance, it appears, to the legendary cult-god of the north. It's said his armies were backed by Grimm and dark magic. It's said his crusades razed whole kingdoms. People go from _uneasy_ to _afraid_.

The children are beginning to draw comments on their eyes.

Tippetarius spends more time in the forest, out of sight. The distance almost doesn't hurt.

It is the closest they've had to a good life.

*

He explains things right off, the next time. He explains about Tippetarius. About the distance.

They make an honest try of it. When the light begins to come into his daemon's antlers— they call souls something else, here; it doesn't matter; _daemon_ is familiar now— they leave town. They keep him out of sight.

They purchase one of the little glass pendants that have become popular among those with insect-shaped souls. Few people glance at them long enough to realize the thing is empty.

Their name doesn't really feel like Ozma, anymore. Ozma feels very far away and very long ago.

But their soul still answers to Tippetarius. _Ozma_ had been a whole person, once, a warrior who saved a princess; but Tippetarius had always been a stolen life, a half-person, a thing they were turned into. _Tippetarius_ still feels accurate, like it is more a role than a name. Like they are just an archetype filled again and again, the details blurring.

They draw plans. They build foundations. Progress is made.

*

Their task is to find the Relics and unite the world.

It's not an easy one.

For several lifetimes, they try in earnest anyway.

*

He begins each life with two searches: for his cane, and for a little glass pendant.

It's easier for Tip to keep out of sight, once the process is far enough along. It hardly hurts at all.

*

It is immensely difficult to unite the world with Salem _actively trying to divide it_.

Her Grimm are always growing in number. Always faster than he can do anything about it. Her armies are vast and mindless and terrible.

The world seems to become more dangerous with every passing lifetime. Still he tries.

*

He fights wars. He fights Grimm. He does not try again to fight Salem.

He doesn't think she'd give The Long Memory back again without wringing a few deaths from him first.

It would be too easy to break him. They both know it.

*

He'd thought it might be easier, to be a Faunus. To not have Tippetarius drawing attention at his side.

He was dramatically wrong.

The first time he looks into a mirror and sees an antlered man looking back, he recoils in terror. When he shoves his host aside and takes to the front of their mind, those familiar antlers light up in brilliant gold, drifting with motes of beautiful dust.

The antlers are too great and sharp for cloaks, or for hats. He remembers the _crack_ of Tip's antler in his love's pale hand, and shudders at the thought of doing her work again. He cannot bear to cleave them off. He's not even sure it would stick.

He lies and says the glow is his Semblance. Most people believe it. But for all that he _feels_ Tippetarius present in his heart, still that death-ache of loss and distance yawns within him. He should be unseparated, like this; he should feel whole. Instead he feels bereft of something his host cannot even understand.

He never looks in mirrors.

*

In his next human life, he finds the Relic of Knowledge.

It answers his questions. It tells him where to find the others; it tells him what powers they possess; it tells him the worst thing he has ever heard. Worse than the destruction of his world, worse than the loss of his love.

 _Salem cannot be destroyed_.

It tells him he will be doing this _forever._

*

He stops bothering with the pendants. With society. He just shuts himself up in a cabin in the woods, and lets his host complain. It is cruel of him, but he has the energy for nothing else.

He guards the Lamp. That is his duty. He's done enough.

Now he can just... retreat into himself. It's the closest he can get to sleeping the eternity away.

*

He lives like that a long time. Tippetarius comes and goes. He stops keeping track of what the deer's other names might be. Tippetarius is easier.

*

He meets four girls.

They give him a rather drastic idea.

He is so very tired; if Salem can have her agents spreading horror through the world, why can't he have his, spreading hope? It's not as though he's doing anything with the magic. It's not as though he does any _good_.

Maybe the Maidens will make better use of the power.

*

And they do, for a while. Stories reach him over the lifetimes, of beautiful young goddesses with incredible magic. He is proud of them. He only sometimes regrets it, even if he always knows he is a coward.

But at least he does not go back to that place in the woods. He goes to find his Relics. They are still just where Jinn told him they would be, more or less. It takes a few lifetimes of trying.

Now, when he finds himself in love, he doesn't run. It grounds him in time, in a life, like nothing else. It does for him what the four girls did: it brings him out from behind his little cabin window, so to speak.

*

He learns that silver-eyed people are being hunted. He wonders for how long that's been going on. He wonders how many silver-eyed people are out there; he spends a while counting all his children and mourning every single loss.

It was only a matter of time until Salem took notice of their abilities, he supposes. It was only a matter of time until she deduced the origin.

He'd like to think she is eliminating threats to her reign of terror.

He knows it's much more personal than that.

*

Then he realizes the Maidens are being hunted.

Perhaps time to be less of a coward, then. He calls upon the friends of his latest lives; he tries again to build a _network_.

This time, it works.

*

The Maidens fade into obscurity, as do the silver eyes. It takes some doing. It takes several lifetimes. Building a global network without drawing her notice is vastly difficult.

He hopes it will be worth it. There is nothing to do but try.

*

He has the Relics. All four of them, finally.

This is terrifying. In part because Salem could claim them, now, and use them to call down the end of everything. In part because—

Well, he's so very tired. He is so very, very tired. And there will only ever be one way he can rest.

Wherever he locks them away, it has to be somewhere Salem could not access them. Somewhere _he_ couldn't. Just in case.

*

His name is Ozymandias, and for the first time since Salem, he has a castle and an army. For the first time since Salem, he has a very convenient opportunity to conquer the world.

It hadn't worked the first time. It won't work by _definition_ , he's aware, having lived now through too many wars and too many invasions. Domination brings suffering, not unity. Attempting to stamp out discord through repression will never work; Mantle's draconian efforts have made that clear.

The war has eaten a full decade, now, and he is growing so very tired of it. They could continue this way for decades more. He needs to put an end to it. He needs to ensure _peace_.

For the first time, he rides into battle with his men and women. For the first time, he goes astride an elk with antlers as bright as sunlight. His people whisper legends to each other all the way through the sands of Vacuo.

He does not count how many soldiers he kills, that day. He watches their daemons dissolve in eddies of gold, bright as Tip's antlers, until he can't tell where the gold dust ends and the desert sands begin.

He wins the war.

*

The peace accords are exhausting. He takes the short route: he has Tip standing tall and regal at his side, antlers burnished gold. The other monarchs know, of course, how the battle played out. They look at him with fearful reverence he remembers from his days as a false god.

People have taken to calling him the Warrior King, now. That is fine. He doesn't want to be a god; better to be a legend.

He could take the whole world; they're all expecting it, all ready to give it to him. He doesn't, though. He says they should build academies.

*

It takes a great deal of magic, but the Relics are sealed.

The world is safe from Salem, now. And from him.


	3. Chapter 3

Pale hands again, in the next life. He peers down at them, inspecting his long and slender fingers, before he draws away from the front of their mind. The new host staggers under the disorientation of being shifted inside himself, and peers around their room as though looking for a threat.

"Who are you?" says Ozpin, wary. His daemon is a kudu, standing tense on the other side of the room. Their house is a little one, and in Vale. Convenient.

They live with their parents; they are sixteen. It could be worse.

 _Please try to remain calm,_ Ozymandias tells him, and of course the boy bolts upright and his daemon stamps like a frightened rabbit _._

"What is this?" says Ozpin, meeting his daemon's eye. They are uneasy. Ozymandias is careful to keep himself separate from the emotion; he is careful to identify himself as their steadiness, their calm.

_I am King Ozymandias._

" _King?_ "

_Well. Not anymore, I suppose. Ozymandias works well enough._

"And you're in my head," says Ozpin, carefully. " _Why?_ Is this a Semblance?"

 _No,_ says Ozymandias, and he cannot help the little ripple of sadness. _It is magic._

*

Ozpin stands uneasily in the grand, ticking Headmaster's office. He is a very tall boy, gangly, without muscle or discipline. His daemon stands at his side, shifting on his hooves and flicking his tail.

"Thank you for accepting the meeting, sir," hedges Ozpin. "I- I understand it's short-notice."

_Let me talk to him._

"Indeed it is," says the Headmaster, whose great brass-colored owl daemon watches impassively from his high-backed chair. "But I'm given to understand you have something of great significance to tell me."

"To ask of you," says Ozpin, "yes."

_Ozpin._

"In a minute," mutters Ozpin, and the Headmaster's eyebrows rise. Ozpin draws himself straighter, shoulders back, hands clasped behind him to keep the shake in them from showing.

_As we practiced, then._

Ozpin bites down on something impolite he might say in response. Instead, he says, carefully: "I'm told you have my cane."

The Headmaster leans forward, eyes flashing with interest.

"Tell me, young man," he says, "what is your daemon's name?"

Ozpin tightens his jaw, and clasps his hands together ever tighter behind his back.

_His wording is imprecise, but you know what he means. It isn't personal, Ozpin._

"Tippetarius," says Ozpin, tightly. "The name you're looking for is Tippetarius."

The Headmaster smiles.

Ozpin doesn't have transcripts from any combat school, of course. He has no training whatsoever. And they have less than a year til the term begins; eight months, maybe.

Still, when the Headmaster passes over the carved handle of The Long Memory to them, the weight of it is a comfort in his hand. It feels _right._ Eight months will be enough.

And so it is.

By the start of the school year, Ozpin walks with the cane as though it is a part of his own body. And he wears the glass pendant of an insect-daemon.

They tell people their daemon is a very shy, very small moth. No one asks terribly many questions.

They are top of their class from the very first year.

*

At twenty-one, Ozpin graduates and obtains a teaching position. At twenty-four, he is made Headmaster. A great deal of fuss is made about his age, but it all dies away in the end. The former Headmaster hand-selected him for the role, after all.

He enjoys having a school far more than he enjoyed having a kingdom. The students are all so bright and strong, brimming with courage and conviction. They remind him of his Maidens. It helps, surrounding himself with their starry-eyed ideals.

Complications come, of course, as they do. There is discord in his inner circle. They spend two agonizing seasons trying to root out a mole, and the year is consumed by damage control. They lose most recon capabilities. Ozpin spends long nights in his office, folded into that high-backed chair, nursing cups of too-sweet cocoa as though it will be enough to comfort him. He sleeps very little, and snaps at his colleagues, and tolerates no commentary on his age from the people who actually know it. Tippetarius stands guard in the vault when he's not scouting the forest.

When the Branwen twins arrive, he is still paranoid enough to think they might be _hers_. But they're not, he quickly comes to realize. They're something else entirely. They could be _his_.

It is a gamble, but not a difficult one. They are skilled in battle and viciously loyal to each other. He pays them extra attention and broadcasts only good intentions. He is kind to them.

Years pass. He watches the way Raven smiles with Tai, softer and soppier than she means to. He watches the way Qrow lights up and tries to hide it at every hint of praise. When he invites them into his office and sits them down across that elaborate mechanical desk, they both go easily.

"Miss and Mister Branwen," he says.

Qrow whistles lowly. "You have to put it that way? You'd think we're married."

"You'll never be married," says Raven, one eyebrow tilted up in amusement.

Qrow scoffs. "What, you think anyone could resist this face?"

"I think we've spent four years watching the whole _school_ resist that face," says his sister.

 _Children, please,_ Ozpin does not say, not least because he is only six or seven years their senior. At least, that is how old he's meant to be. By now... Ozma-Ossian-Ozymandias, and all the others, have added _Ozpin_ to the list. They think as one. They are one.

Their daemon is called Tippetarius.

The daemons of these two, though, have always been their weak spots. Qrow's jackal shifts uneasily just behind his heels, trying and failing not to broadcast their discomfort; Raven's black fox sits uncannily still and tense by her ankle. Ozpin watches them for a moment, then straightens, and both the Branwens fall silent to look at him.

"Through your years at Beacon," he says, "you have performed exceptionally well. I have watched you overcome every challenge set in your way, and more than that, I have watched you both grow into individuals worthy of the titles you will soon bear."

"You know you talk like an old man?" says Qrow, sprawled long-limbed in his chair with the air of disrespect he has aggressively cultivated in every classroom he's ever been placed in. "Seriously, Professor. Aren't you practically our age?"

"Actually," says Ozpin, "I'm not."

Qrow begins in on something about semantics, but Raven is already leaning forward, her eyes and her fox's both bright with sharp interest.

"Is this about your daemon?" she says. She was always the clever one, of the two. And Qrow was always the loyal one; he flicks her a look, but goes silent to watch.

"In a sense," says Ozpin, "yes. It is. There are things I never tell most of this school, you see. Truths that only a select few individuals in all of Remnant have had the opportunity to know."

He takes the pendant from the cowl around his neck. The twins track his every movement as he sets it on the mechanical desk, gears ticking and whirring just on the other side of the glass.

"Do try not to be too alarmed," he says, and clicks the pendant open. Empty.

Raven recoils with a tight little hiss of revulsion. Qrow stands so quickly his chair hits the floor with a _bang_.

"Really," says Ozpin, mildly, enjoying himself, "Do sit down, Qrow. It will all become clear momentarily."

"You," says Qrow, clearly rattled and getting angry with it, but he wrenches his chair upright and drops back into it. "You don't _have_ one? How is that _possible?_ "

"I _knew_ it," breathes his sister, only leaning in again. "How did you do it?"

"I may have... somewhat misled the public about my daemon's true name and nature," admits Ozpin, tipping his head. On the other side of the room, the elevator rattles to the top of its track and clicks neatly into place. "But I will allow him to explain."

The twins, realizing where he's looking, turn. Their daemons still to follow their gazes. Under all those staring eyes, the elevator doors slide open.

Tippetarius looks very handsome, really, as a kudu. The rack of antlers on his head reaches tall and sharp, and glows with a dazzling gold.

"Hello," he says, directly to all assembled. They stare. "Please, call me Tippetarius."

Qrow falls out of his chair.

*

James is ridiculous about it, as people sometimes are. He drops into a sharp military bow, and the hawk on his shoulder dips her head.

"I've heard stories," he murmurs, "of the great Warrior King. They say even his daemon had a golden crown."

When he'd been a god, they'd said Tippetarius held the sun itself in his antlers. Then they'd said he collected the Dust of his victims' dying souls, and built his antlers from it. Ozpin thinks he's had quite enough of people's theorizing, all told.

"Well," he says, "I have a few more stories to share with you, in that case."

*

The daemon of Pyrrha Nykos is an elegant saker falcon, perched on her shoulder.

The daemon of Jaune Arc is nothing more spectacular, nor less noble, than a large sleek working dog.

They do not want to leave him alone in the vault, facing Cinder, whose polecat blazes with fire where it is curled around her neck. But he can sense the hoofbeats coming down the corridor.

"You'll only get in the way," he tells them, and could not possibly mean it more. He knows what the crossfire will look like. The hoofbeats are getting closer. "Go."

That is enough. They hurry away along the wall, and Cinder lets them, amused.

He hears Pyrrha's catch of breath, Jaune's yelp of shock, when a kudu with blazing antlers charges past them through the darkness.

He gets to see Cinder's expression twist in shock when she turns, and Tippetarius tackles her full-on. She skids away to regain her balance in a blaze of flame, snarling. Tip takes his place beside Ozpin's side, tosses his glowing rack of antlers, stands his ground.

The fight begins.

*

Beacon falls.

*

Oscar Pine is a small, unassuming boy, and Zoroaster is a small, unassuming daemon. He is a duiker: a handsome little antelope, with pointed horns shorter even than his ears. At fourteen, he can't have been settled for long.

Ozpin will be sorry to see him change.

*

When Oscar goes nervously up to the man in the bar, Ozpin tells him what to say.

"He says..." mutters the boy, his little antelope daemon hiding behind his heels, "I'm supposed to ask you for my cane back."

Qrow sits up, slowly. Beside his leg, his jackal-shaped soul has gone still and watchful.

"And," says Oscar, "he says to tell you, uh... Tippetarius says hello?"

Qrow sweeps the boy into a one-armed hug, of course. Oscar splutters, because the lanky man smells of alcohol and he can feel Qrow's laugh through his whole body; Zoroaster tries and fails to duck away from the circling, nearly-prancing jackal daemon.

In their mind, Ozpin chuckles.

_I'm sorry about him. You have to understand the enthusiasm._

_Welcome, Oscar, to the fight for the world._

*

"I-I'll still be here," Oscar tells the assembled teenagers, who are peering at him in half-incredulous fascination. Their daemons hem him in on all sides. Qrow is sprawled mostly-passed-out on a couch nearby, his jackal-soul draped heavy and languid across his chest, while Oscar feels so very small in his chair. Zoroaster is huddled nervous by his knees. "Just so you know."

He breathes in, deep. And Ozpin steps forward.

His students burst into gasps and startles and shrieks as Zoroaster's little horns turn to golden antlers. Ozpin opens his eyes, the glow fading from them, and smiles.

*

"James is what my friends call me," says Ironwood, his face impassive. "To you, it's General."

And then he shoots them.

The shattering of his Aura seems to knock all sound from the world, and then Oscar is falling. He is falling _off of Atlas_ , falling forever, falling through the sky—

This is not the terrible thing.

The terrible thing is that he is falling _away from Zoroaster._

He should scream, but the air chokes it from his throat. Oscar's soul is so far away, and every further inch is an agony, every second of falling wrenches them apart and apart and _apart_ until it's ripping his very being down to the thinnest fibers—

The little antelope staggers, falls after him, and now they are two specks hurtling toward the ground. Still too far apart, separated by what feels like miles of wind and empty space. He wants to hold his daemon when he dies, he's so _afraid_ —

Ah. Fear.

Yes, Ozpin has come to realize rather a lot about fear.

He (they) can feel the change as he (they) falls. It is warm, and comes from within. He is so breathless with terror already there is no more room in him to be afraid of this.

When Oscar lands, safely, in a burst of magic, it takes a long moment for the dust and green lightning to die away. He straightens to find himself looking into his daemon's eyes. The little antelope stands just as firm as he does, and his horns aren't nubby little black things the length of his ears, now.

 _Oscar_ , says the voice in his mind that isn't as separate as it had been. _I—_

"Stop," says Oscar. "All I want to know is how we save Atlas next."

His daemon is looking back at him. His antlers are graceful and pointed and glowing a brilliant, godly gold. They are made of Light.

His name is Zoroaster. It's also Tippetarius.


End file.
